Nintendo Puts Its Sleep-Tracking Gizmo on Hold Indefinitely

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Nintendo Puts Its Sleep-Tracking Gizmo on Hold Indefinitely

Nintendo

Nintendo will sleep on its so-called "quality of life" health tracking device, it said this week.

In 2014, the videogame maker had detailed its plans to release a non-game fitness device that tracked your sleep and gave you updates on your health in a fun, Nintendo-y sort of way. It said that it planned to have the device on shelves by the early part of 2016. Yesterday, during the Q&A portion of a briefing for investors, Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima said that the "QOL" device was off the table for now. He pointed this out even though none of the investors had actually asked about the device's status.

"In regards to the Quality of Life [device], which was not mentioned in any of today's questions, we do not have the conviction that the sleep-and-fatigue-themed [device] can enter the phase of actually becoming a product," Kimishima said in remarks translated by WIRED. "We no longer have any plans to release it by the end of March 2016. On the other hand, we still believe there are things we can do in the general category of Quality of Life, and we will continue to study the possibility of expanding into this field."

Nintendo's plan to shake up the crowded health-technology industry was to move past "wearables" into "non-wearable" devices. You'd simply get into bed, go to sleep, and the device would automatically sense that you were asleep. It would upload your data to the cloud for processing, then deliver results and health suggestions to you when you were ready to check in. If you weren't getting enough sleep, the device might tell you to exercise more or eat healthier foods, e.g.

“Fatigue and sleep are themes that are rather hard to visualize in more objective ways. At Nintendo, we believe that if we could visualize them, there would be great potential for many people,” Nintendo's former president Satoru Iwata said in 2014 while detailing the device.

This would not have been Nintendo's first attempt at a health product; its Wii Fit series of games for the Wii and Wii U consoles, which featured health trackers and exercise routines, have sold over 40 million units.